


The World Didn't End

by EinnaDreamer



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 15:18:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16139981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EinnaDreamer/pseuds/EinnaDreamer
Summary: The world didn't end. Sometimes, that's enough. Other times, it would be nice to have a reason to remember that there's more to life than that.





	The World Didn't End

"We should celebrate," Lady suggests almost like an afterthought.

"Celebrate what?" Dante asks, as though the thought never occurred to him. It probably never did, at that.

"Well, the world didn't end," she replies. She knows that she's grasping at straws, but she's been so weary lately.

"So, it's a celebrate every day thing?" Dante inquires with a little more eagerness than Lady thinks such an idea merits. If they do that, it'll become pointless really fast.

"Obviously not," she tells him. "But we did just defeat a potentially world-ending threat."

"Well, yeah..." Dante clearly isn't making the connection. "So?"

She shakes her head with equal measures sadness and incredulity.

"Nothing," she says. "It was just a stupid thought."

\--//--

The thing is, demon hunting is a tough job. Most people might think this is obvious, since you're frequently fighting super-powered beings of great strength and durability. What they don't understand is that fighting is the easy part.

Lady sighs as she steps out of the shower. The whole room is so covered in steam from the hot water that there is no point in even attempting to towel off in here; she will inevitably be damp again before she reaches the door. Instead she grabs a towel and leaves for the main part of her hotel room.

As she dries off and slips into her sleepwear, her mind wanders.

The worst part of the job is how it wears you down mentally. No matter how much you love killing demons, being exposed to so much bad all the time will leave its marks. Lady has no delusions that the state of her mind is anything other than a psychologist's nightmare. She avoids such people like the plague, because she's functioning just fine and can still find joy in small things.

Lady towels off her hair and gets her hairdryer out of her bag. There is no way she's going to bed with wet or even damp hair any more than she's going to bed covered in demon blood, sweat and dirt. Lady doesn't literally get covered in blood often, since she doesn't go into close quarters a lot, but she always feels in need of a hot shower after a job.

Still, she has been feeling it lately; just how much the job is wearing her down.

For a moment she considers how much it might wear on Dante - and how much worse the time between jobs must be. Being a half demon must be miserable, she thinks. Being a Devil Hunter would wear down the human side pretty badly, while the fight must be the only thing that relieves the demon side's need for violence.

That was why she had suggested... but no, it had been pretty stupid. It's time to grow up already. Besides, neither of them are the type.

Lady stretches out on the bed. She stares at the ceiling for a while - she honestly has no idea of how long - before succumbing to sleep.

\--//--

Dante has been thinking. Contrary to popular belief - a popular belief he wholeheartedly encourages, mind - he does so a lot. He has a lot of time on his hands between jobs and eventually even he runs out of things to do. He dislikes these times, as thinking too much inevitably leads to depressing places.

Lately there has been one thing his thoughts seem to be circling back to. It's stupid; just something Lady said years ago. It had been back during her melancholy period, which she tries hard to pretend never happened and Dante goes along with because he can tell she doesn't want to talk about it - and because he can't think of any way to make a conversation more painfully awkward than dragging that up. Besides, he doesn't want to get shot again.

Lately it's been refusing to leave him alone. Maybe she had a point back then. He was younger then and maybe not too quick on the uptake in that one instance.

With a heavy sigh, Dante banishes the train of thought once more. It's only ever more frustrating, especially since he doesn't know what to do about it. Instead he turns his thoughts to trying to figure out where his magazines have gone. He hopes Patty hasn't thrown them in the trash, but who knows with that girl? It's probably more likely that she has just put them somewhere that only makes sense to her, in her ongoing mission to clean up the shop. At least she gave up on the cringeworthy decorations.

\--//--

"Well, that's the last of them," Lady observes as she reloads and holsters her handguns. This was a mess. At least Dante had the sense to make sure that she and Trish would be nearby for it.

"Looks that way," Trish agrees.

"Well, ladies, what do you say we go celebrate?" Dante asks.

"Celebrate?" Lady repeats, her tone clearly reflecting her surprise at the suggestion. Where did that come from?

"Sure," Dante says with a shrug. "The world didn't end, the pretty damsels have been saved and reunited with their family and you two looked like you even had a bit of fun there. Sounds like happy endings all around."

There is something suspiciously familiar about this. If only she could put her finger on why that would be...

The moment it clicks, Lady almost curses. Why is he dragging that up? She thought they had an understanding.

"Aren't you broke?" she asks. Maybe her tone is a little harsher than necessary, but she can't bring herself to care.

"Don't be like that," Dante replies. Clearly he believes that it will all work itself out - which is how he got so deep into debt in the first place.

"Since when are we the type to celebrate anyway?" Lady asks instead. She knows she has a point. They never do this.

"I have to admit, I rather like the idea," Trish speaks up. She can't possibly know what this is really about, of course. She wasn't around then.

At the same time, her two cents come without baggage and implied meaning. It's easier to accept the suggestion from her.

"I guess we have deserved some celebrating," Lady concedes. "We could go shopping."

"How is that celebrating?" Dante asks. He sounds incredulous and almost a bit horrified. It could be from being left with one or two bills he couldn't pay - for things he didn't technically buy. Lady can almost understand his reluctance.

The suggestion isn't really for him, even if he could use a few more changes of clothes. Thus Lady makes a dismissive gesture to him while focusing on Trish. Trish is apparently quite enthusiastic to the idea, if the expression on her face is anything to go by.

"Sounds like an excellent idea," the female demon agrees. If Lady were to guess, the blonde doesn't have any more festive changes of clothes than she does.

"Go home, take a shower and change into something halfway decent; something not stained with demon blood and other assorted nastiness, if such clothing exists in your wardrobe," Lady tells Dante.

"We'll be by in a few hours," Trish adds. The two set out to get something nice to wear and take a much needed shower before the whole celebration thing begins.

\--//--

Lady feels perfectly at ease in the elegant thigh-length dress she bought. It's white with silver accents and she even found a pair of white heels she didn't know she owned to go with it. She feels feminine and off-duty in a way that she rarely ever does.

Beside her, Trish is also dressed up. She has even been talked into wearing a skirt and while she looks perfectly at ease in the tight garment, Lady suspects that it will see little use beyond tonight. Still, it goes well with the top they picked out.

The two step into the shop. Lady has to admit that she doesn't have high hopes for finding anything other than a still dirty Dante napping on the couch. It would be very typical of him to pull something like that.

She is pleasantly surprised to find Dante perfectly clean. His hair still looks slightly damp, so Lady guesses that it could have gone either way. She also doesn't want to know how many copies of the exact same outfit he owns, but at least this one looks clean.

Dante is eyeing his coat as though he's considering whether or he can clean it in time.

"Leave it," Trish tells him.

Dante sighs, but doesn't argue. He stands up and walks over to them. Lady can see him grabbing Ebony and Ivory as he rises, but honestly can't fault him when she isn't going entirely unarmed herself. Years of ingrained habit and necessity are hard to ignore - and could be lethal if they ever succeeded.

"Any idea of where to go?" Lady asks. She's got a few ideas herself, but she's not egocentric enough not to at least hear out other suggestions.

"Well, there is a supposedly really good pizzeria over on-" Dante doesn't get to finish the sentence as both Lady and Trish speaks up against that idea.

"Not a chance," Trish says.

"We're not having pizza," Lady agrees empathetically.

"All right," Dante yields easily - too easily, really. Lady narrows her eyes suspiciously at him, but doesn't comment on it. Instead the three walk out the door and into the early evening.

\--//--

Predictably, Trish thinks, they wind up back at the Devil May Cry. Trish is carrying the three pizzas, because Lady doesn't trust Dante not to sneak himself slices if he does it. Trish can't fault her for thinking that. It's been known to happen.

Dante has been made to carry the drinks instead. There is a six pack of the cheap beer that Trish knows to be his favourite and a bottle of pretty expensive red wine that Lady swears is delicious. Trish has her doubts, since wine isn't her usual drink of choice, but she's willing to trust Lady on this. It helps that she suspects that wine isn't Lady's drink of choice either.

They settle around the sofa table, with Lady and Trish in the sofa and Dante across from them. Lady has had the foresight to get the two women disposable plastic wine glasses.

Lady pours herself and Trish a glass each as Dante opens his first beer.

Conversation comes easy, in the form of the banter and jokes that they trade naturally on any given day. The atmosphere is more lighthearted than normal, but offset by a lingering awkwardness stemming from the newness of the situation.

Lady is right about the wine. It tastes better than Trish expected. It also goes surprisingly well with the pizza.

"How did you find this?" Trish asks, indicating the wine in her glass as she raises it to take another sip.

"It's a funny story," Lady replies. "Of course, it was all Dante's fault." She launches into a story about her and Dante's early relationship, something Trish knows almost nothing about. She tells about a few missions working together and the excess of pizza leading her to look for something to make it bearable.

It actually is a funny story. Both Lady and Dante sound so young in it, compared to now. It's a strange mix of the competent fighters Trish knows and youthful shenanigans. Trish finds herself laughing at several points throughout the story, with Dante and Lady frequently joining her. It's nice that they can laugh about things like this.

The pizza disappears at the expected quick rate. Dante manages to grab the most slices for himself, but Lady makes a point of taking the last slice. Dante could probably have beaten her to it if he had been really trying, but he has the good sense to let it be.

The bottle of wine empties as the pizza runs out. Trish savours the last glass. She will have to memorise the name of this wine - for special occasions only, of course.

"Have you ever had a job suddenly go in a really weird or unintentionally ridiculous direction?" Trish asks, because Lady's story made her think of one time that happened to her.

"It happens," Lady confirms, sounding quite amused. She probably also has an example or two in mind, Trish guesses.

"Did you have anything in mind?" the brunette asks.

Trish nods and starts up the story. It wasn't a very important job and wouldn't have paid all that well. It was right after she left to work on her own for a bit. A young man had come with a request for her to hunt down a demon, which was supposedly wreaking havoc in the part of town he lived in. He really should have been checking his facts better.

By the time she finishes her story, Trish notices that her glass is empty. Since she's a demon and has a significantly higher tolerance for alcohol than a human, she sees nothing wrong with raiding Dante's liquor cabinet for something else to drink. She does rinse out her glass before pouring some whiskey into it.

Lady similarly rinses her own glass, but fills it with water. It's probably a smart choice for the human in the group to have some of that every now and again. She won't get as drunk as quickly that way.

Lady tells them about one of her jobs gone inexplicably hilarious. Trish has to concede that it's much funnier than her story, but then Lady has been a Devil Hunter several years longer than her. She has had more time to accumulate funny incidents and mishaps. As she's getting a bit tipsy, she starts gesticulating and making the most entertaining expressions to go with her stories.

Dante has a couple of stories to trade as well, but Trish thinks that Lady's are usually the funnier ones.

At some point they relocate to the pool table and play a few games. No gambling, though, since Lady turns out to be mildly terrifying at the game and despite her claims to the contrary, she doesn't need the money she would get from fleecing Dante and Trish.

Despite spacing her drinks out with some water every few glasses, Lady is being far more affected by the alcohol than either Dante or Trish.

The hour is getting pretty late by now, almost midnight. Dante appears to have run out of actually funny stories, but he does offer up a couple of rather heartwarming ones, the kind that makes Trish wonder if he isn't secretly as much of a sucker for romance as he is for redemption stories. Asking would be pointless, though. He's not nearly drunk enough to admit to it.

By two AM even Trish is feeling the effects of her alcohol consumption. She knows Dante has to be feeling it as well. They've finally run out of stories and conversation turns elsewhere.

Lady has taken to giving Dante advice on his nonexistent love life and the causes thereof. It's immensely entertaining and Trish finds herself making several little comments herself. Dante seems to alternate between casually flippant replies, which incites short and mostly nonsensical arguments between him and Lady, and acting like he treats her comments perfectly seriously, which is quite funny in its own right.

By the time the first light of dawn can be seen, they are all ambling off to bed. Well, Lady has fallen asleep and Dante is presumably carrying her off to bed. Trish guesses that he'll sleep on the couch, to avoid getting shot once Lady wakes up if nothing else. She could be wrong, but she doesn't think so. Not at this time, anyway.

She makes her way to the little closet of a room that she had made herself at home in when Dante first brought her back from Mallet Island. It barely fits a bed, a vanity and a closet, but it's enough to sleep in. At least she's aware enough to slip off anything that she can tell will be ridiculously uncomfortable in the morning. She almost pities Lady for not being able to do the same.

Her last thought before she falls asleep is that this celebration thing was a great success and she would be more than fine with doing this again sometime, when an appropriate occasion presents itself.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally, I wrote this for a celebration/competition thing on the Devil May Cry Official Amino. It was for celebrating reaching the 1000 members mark, I believe. Either way, the directions given were to write about the characters celebrating some kind of victory, with the specifics of what that victory might be (big or small) left up to the writer.  
>   
> Believe it or not, that makes this story just over a year old as of me writing this. I didn't have an account here until just recently, however, so really couldn't post it here until now. There are more things I could cross-post, but we'll see if/when I get around to it.  
>   
> I hope you enjoyed and we'll just have to see what's next.


End file.
